http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimination.html
"I don't believe in recursion as the basis of all programming. This is a
fundamental belief of certain computer scientists, especially those who
love Scheme and like to teach programming by starting with a "cons" cell
and recursion. But to me, seeing recursion as the basis of everything else
is just a nice theoretical approach to fundamental mathematics (turtles
all the way down), not a day-to-day tool.
"
Ahem.
-- vyzo